MOUNTAINHEAD (2025)

In SUCCESSION, Logan Roy and many of those around him were functional people,even capable of physical violence and disappearing bodies and crimes.

SUCCESSION, on one level, is Lear’s kingdom not outliving him, conquered by a prince of Scandinavia while Lear’s children squabble and fail.

MOUNTAINHEAD, written and directed by Jesse Armstrong – which has more of his time on THE THICK OF IT in it than his SUCCESSION, I think – is the story of people who are not functional in the physical space. People who plan to cheat death but can’t boil an egg.

There’s a nasty hint of Steve Jobs in Steve Carell’s ageing venture capitalist Randall – “Dark Money Gandalf” – grappling with relevance and cancer (Jobs is infamously said to have tried to treat his rare cancer with acupuncture and juices, exerting “magical thinking” on the tumour). He’s on his way to a regular retreat/bro-party with three other tech overlords, two of whom are billionaires like him, and the party’s host, who’s “only” worth $500 million, so the others call him Soup Kitchen. One of these billionaires has unrolled unguarded generative AI on his Twitter-like service Traam.

(Traam – tram – trolley – trolley problem)

(There’s a real company called Traam that makes bullet-resistant glass, and another that makes skis. Mountainhead is what Soup Kitchen names his grim mansion on the side of a snow-covered mountain.)

The AI rollout has lead to a global deluge of sophisticated deepfakes that’s lit off riots all over the planet. The four tech kings sit in their mountain hideaway watching the world burn. And, after a while, they realise this is opportunity.

The music is a little too SUCCESSION-y, if that makes sense? It acts as a signal that it’s a Jesse Armstrong post-SUCCESSION joint, which probably makes sense – MOUNTAINHEAD, shot in a month, is very much a proof of concept for “Jesse Armstrong, director.”

The plot has an elegant line with a nice turn – it’s not about the future of the world, it’s really about Randall and his fear – but that gets obscured in the last quarter or so by the cringe. These are financially and technologically incredibly consequential people who are wildly ineffectual physical human beings. They think they’re early Roman emperors who are comfortable with the sword, but, no, they’re gits in gilets. They can only kill by inaction.

Think of it as a short story. Don’t treat it as the next big statement by the guy who created SUCCESSION. It’s a fun miniature between big works. And it operates very well in that framework. There are also some funny lines – but not as many as you’d expect. Armstrong is shifting position. The next thing should be really interesting.